From Ashburn (click to change), it will be visible between 21:25 and 04:51. It will become accessible at around 21:25, when it rises 9° above your south-eastern horizon, and then reach its highest point in the sky at 01:10, 28° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 04:51 when it sinks to 10° above your south-western horizon.

Saturn opposite the Sun

This optimal positioning occurs when Saturn is almost directly opposite
the Sun in the sky. Since the Sun reaches its greatest distance below the
horizon at midnight, the point opposite to it is highest in the sky at the same
time.

At around the same time that Saturn passes opposition, it also makes
its closest approach to the Earth – termed its perigee –
making it appear at its
brightest and largest.

This happens because when Saturn lies opposite the Sun in the sky, the
solar system is lined up so that Saturn, the Earth and the Sun form a
straight line with the Earth in the middle, on the same side of the Sun as
Saturn.

In practice, however, Saturn orbits much further out in the solar system than the Earth – at an average distance from the Sun of 9.56 times that of the Earth,
and so its angular size does not vary much as it cycles between
opposition and solar conjunction.

On this occasion, Saturn will lie at a distance of
9.04 AU,
and its disk will measure
18.4 arcsec
in diameter, shining at magnitude 0.0. Even at its closest approach
to the Earth, however, it is not possible to distinguish it as more than a
star-like point of light
without the aid of a telescope.

The rings of Saturn

Saturn will be angled to show its northern hemisphere at this opposition, and the rings will inclined at an angle of 26° to our line of sight, which is almost the maximum inclination they can have. This means they will be very well presented.

The graph below shows the changing inclination of Saturn's rings over time. The
black line indicates their inclination to our line of sight from the Earth. A
negative angle indicates that the north pole is tipped towards us, while
a positive angle indicates that we see the south pole. A angle close to zero
means that Saturn's rings appear close to edge on.

The red line indicates the inclination of the rings to the Sun's line of
sight to the planet. Interesting phenomena can occur when the rings are very
close to edge-on, if the Sun illuminates one side of the rings, while we see
the other. At such times, we see the unilluminated side of the rings.

The Seeliger Effect

For a few hours around the exact moment of opposition, it may be possible to
discern a marked brightening of Saturn's rings in comparison to the planet's
disk, known as the Seeliger Effect.

This occurs because Saturn's rings are made of a fine sea of ice particles
which are normally illuminated by the Sun at a slightly different angle from
our viewing angle, so that we see some illuminated particles and some which are
in the shadow of others.

At around the time of opposition, however, the ice particles are illuminated
from almost exactly the same direction from which we view them, meaning that we
see very few which are in shadow.

Saturn in coming weeks

Over the weeks following its opposition, Saturn will reach
its highest point in the sky four minutes earlier each night, gradually
receding from the pre-dawn morning sky while remaining visible in the evening
sky for a few months.

A chart of the path of Saturn across the sky in 2017 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.